Prospective Immigrants, Please Note

The title of this collection comes from Adrienne Rich’s poem. I first encountered her poem in the 2010s, when I ran a writing circle for Swirl, a group for mixed-race individuals, couples, and families. In the writing circle I focused on themes of identity and culture. We explored how to bring disparate backgrounds together, how to feel more present in one’s body as the children of two or more clashing histories.

I am not mixed-race, but as the first to be born in the United States, I am still a child of clashing histories. Not Filipino enough, not American enough. The last two lines of Rich’s poem:

The door itself makes no promises.

It is only a door.

A gut punch. A recognition that the American dream is not promised. Or that the American Dream is just that…a dream.